Peter Winer

iPhone ships. iPling is here.

The iPling team members hit a bunch of iPhone stores yesterday, evangelizing iPling.  Michael swept San Diego.  Jud and Scott hit Albuquerque.  Samir was in Los Angeles.  Manuel and Carlos made a heroic drive from Irvine to San Francisco in a Shelby Mustang, stopping at a bunch AT&T and Apple stores along the way.  Epic road trip.

AJAX Outliner

Outline of DMC Domains

I've lost count of how many outliners I've developed. My first outliner - Think Tank - was primarily a writing tool.  MORE used outlining for making presentations and some of it's most important features live on in PowerPoint today.  More recently, I developed Stat Ref and used outlining to organize libraries of textbooks, first on CD-ROM then on the Internet.

So it seemed natural to put outlining into the Determina Management Console (DMC) for managing Domains.  DMC Domains are a lot like Windows Domains.  Any Domain can have users, servers, desktops, permissions and configuration parameters.  In DMC the configuration parameters, known as Configuration Sets determine how the servers and desktops are protected against a comprehensive set of vulnerabilities.

DMC is web-based.  The server-based application is written in Java plus Struts plus MySQL running on Tomcat.  The client-side code is written in JavaScript, using XML-HTTP, CSS and the browser DOM.  It's been tested on IE 7, Firefox and IE 6 but not Safari.  Now that Safari runs on Windows, we'll probably see more of it in the enterprise world.

Determina Personal Edition

Yesterday, we released the first Alpha release of Determina Personal Edition (PE).  Determina PE identifies vulnerabilities on your PC and protects against them.  Vulnerabilities are security weaknesses in the OS and applications that can be exploited by belligerent code.

The best-known vulnerabilities are server-side, lead by the so-called Buffer Overflow problems with Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).  Various client-side vulnerabilities have been identified in in Internet Explorer, Flash and Office applications.  Determina PE scans your machine and can detect vulnerabilities from a comprehensive set.  Based on the number and severity of vulnerabilities found, PE displays a System Protection Factor that indicates your degree of risk.  PE protects your machine against such vulnerabilities.  It also tells you how to acquire and install vendor updates that also improve protection.

Since Determina PE is a consumer product, we implemented a 'set it and forget it' user experience.  Once you install PE, it will monitor and protect your system comprehensively.  It will also periodically download updates from Determina so your protection is always up-to-date.  This first Alpha is free.  The fully-functional software can be used for 45 days.  We are actively working on improvements and new functionality for PE, so stay tuned.

NFC in Industry Today

Near Field Communications (NFC) is still in its infancy, but industry trials continue to roll.

The NFC Forum is an industry group founded by Sony, NXP Semiconductors and Nokia in 2005.  NFC Forum now has over 110 members.

Last week at the Nokia Connection 2007 trade show, Nokia discussed several trials under way and discussed their vision for using mobile phones for payments within the next three to five years. ABI Research has predicted that 20% of all new mobile phone handsets will include NFC by 2012. CR80News provides an overview of various trials including Visa, Cingular and Nokia.  Yesterday, Cellular South and Kyocera announced a trial as well.

Gordon Brown succeeds Tony Blair

Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister of Great Britain today.  He will be succeeded by Labor's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.  Blair will be remembered as one of Britain's longest-serving Prime Ministers, managing during a period of economic growth and improved health care and other government services.  He will also be remembered for leading Great Britain, behind the United States, into the Iraq War.
For two different perspectives on the transition, The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Near Field Communications

Near Field Communications (NFC) adoption is still far from widespread, but telephone handset manufacturers and service providers are continuing to roll out trials and trumpet their visions.

NFC embeds Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in cell phones or other gadgets.  A typical RFID tag can identify itself in the presence of a reader.  An NFC-enabled device can identify itself and link to the device that embeds it.  In mobile eCommerce, the difference is easy to see.  With a simple RFID-enabled credit card such as MasterCard PayPass, consumers can make purchases more quickly by just tapping the card at the point of sale.  The main benefit is making transactions simpler and faster.  Consumers and retailers like that.  It also will divert more small-scale cash transactions to credit or debit cards.  The card issuers really like that.

With an NFC-enabled cell phone, convenient purchases are also possible.  Consumers get additional benefits from the phone that embeds the tag.  Imagine this: You browse in an electronics store and tap your phone on a product display.  Your phone remembers product and the selling price.  Since your phone is web-enabled, you can easily get product information and competitive prices.  When you get to the point of sale, your phone can deliver your shopping list and start the transaction.  You can use the phone key pad to securely enter your pin.  The phone can also send the transaction record to Quicken or any other personal budgeting tool.

I think this is all pretty cool.  There is one big problem I wish the NFC proponents would address.  When your phone is NFC-enabled, what happens if you lose it?  Clearly these devices will need some form of user-authentication and it can't be so cumbersome it overrides the convenience.

Recommendations

My six-year-old took a sudden interest in woodworking,  Since he's only six, we're making really simple stuff.  Mostly just cutting up wood into pieces and then screwing the pieces together.

Now, he's not really ready to use a saw so I do all the cutting.  He mostly turns the screws.  To make it easier for him, I use a power drill to make pilot holes.

I wanted to allow him to do more of it himself so we went to Home Depot to get a couple of clamps and a hand drill.  When we were kids, we had these drills that look like a hand-operated egg-beater.

When we got to the store we found that they didn't have anything but electric drills.  What a disappointment!  After we got home, I did some searching online and found this Fiskars hand drill that's actually made for physical therapy.  I bought one and it's really cool.  I recommend it for kids who want to get started with woodworking before they're ready for power tools.

Which brings me to the subject of recommendations.  Friend to Friend is a new startup that makes a recommendations engine and widgets.  Look at the two recommendations on the sidebar of this page.  If anyone purchases one of the products through my recommendation, together we'll make a donation to a worthy charity.  As Friend to Friend says, this is how you make your two cents count.

iPling Unleashes Mobile Social Networking

I admit it.  I am an unabashed fan of iPling.  I’m also on the iPling team, helping launch their engineering effort.

iPling is one of the world’s first products aimed at Apple’s new iPhone.  With iPling you can find your friends and people like you while you’re traveling around with your phone.

iPling users set up profiles and decide how specifically they want to reveal their location and interests.  When you’re using iPling, you look for friends and the application displays a map showing where people are located.  When you see someone you want to meet up with, you text them and arrange it.

Part of the iPling magic is the elegant user interface and its ease of use.  iPling is compelling because it unleashes social networking from the desktop.  When people network on the go, it becomes much more spontaneous.  It also bridges online social networking to physical networking in real space.

There’s a live demo on iPling’s Web site.  You can run it any computer with Safari.  It’s even better on the iPhone.  I recommend checking it out.

Biker's Training Partner

I’m a road biker. Weather and time permitting, I bike up Page Mill Road twice a week. My bike is equipped with a Garmin Edge 305 GPS and heart monitor. During a ride it's always recording my location, altitude, speed and heart rate. I download the data to my PC after every ride.

I use Garmin Training Center to view graphs and statistics about elevation gain/loss, speed, heart rate and calories burned. I use Google Earth for its superior maps and satellite imagery. I like to play with the maps and make pictures of my rides in the mountains.

This is great, but I really want a web site where I can upload my ride summaries and share them. I’d like to share my rides and get suggestions from other riders. I’d also like to use the site to get acquainted with other riders like me and arrange to ride together.

Map My Ride provides some of this functionality but not all of it. I’m still looking for a great site that provides this type of bike riders social network.

Opposed to RFID for Tracking People

Joe Simitian, my California State Senator is introducing a set of bills that would make it illegal for companies and governments to require people to carry RFID-enabled identification cards.  It would also make it illegal for such cards to be used to track a person's whereabouts.
I am a big RFID fan.  RFID can be used to track objects, validate product authenticity and reduce the hassles of electronic commerce.  RFID-enabled devices with sensors also have a wide variety of beneficial applications.  Having said that, I have always been opposed to companies and governments mandating RFID in passports and other identity documents.  I welcome and support Joe Simitian's efforts.